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- To try and understand the situation, I talked to LADWP spokesperson Jane Galbraith about this. "The Los Angeles Aqueduct is providing 20 percent of our water this year,” she told me, referring to the Mulholland-designed aqueduct that conveys water from an area just north of our city. “It provides 75 percent in a wet year," she went on. As for the rest? "We're buying water from Metropolitan Water District," she explained. "They're the wholesaler. We'll be buying 80 percent from Met." Buying from a wholesaler is more expensive than using the water that just flows in from the Owens Valley that supplies The Los Angeles Aqueduct, so prices will go up, but at the moment, there's no real danger of running out. In theory.
- Eventually, the farmers got wise, and waged economic warfare via price hikes, which Mulholland resisted. They waged a bloodless resistance campaign against Mulholland that newspapers called "California's Little Civil War." In response, Mulholland sent a small army, and gave them shoot-to-kill orders. Later, Mulholland pulled a similar prank on communities to LA's northwest by building the St. Francis Dam. That time, however, the war wasn't bloodless. The dam failed immediately following an inspection by Mulholland, and as many as 600 people died.
- California's natural beauty is going to shrivel up sooner than humanity here will. An ecologist named Craig Allen told National Geographic a few years ago, "The projections are that Joshua trees may not survive in Joshua Tree National Park. Sequoias may not survive in Sequoia National Park." We may have to start weighing the idea of irrigating our national parks.